I had been excited about Paul Feig’s “Last Christmas” for awhile but missed watching it at Christmas. Instead, I watched it in late January after I’d already been driven mad by the Christmas music soundtrack at my seasonal job. The excitement to watch it left my body quickly as three versions of Wham!’s “Last Christmas” played three separate times in the first 15 minutes (twice in quick succession, though one rendition is short).
I know the film’s based on the song, but that is overkill, especially playing the song at least six times throughout. I also wasn’t expecting this to feature the bulk of George Michael’s discography on the soundtrack either. Some of his songs are used to strong effect, but when it’s just filler, it’s a headache.
The film follows Kate (Emilia Clarke), an elf who works for a year-round Christmas shop run by Santa (Michelle Yeoh). Kate is wholly irresponsible and is stuck in a selfish rut and soon meets Tom (Henry Golding), where sparks fly.
The cleverest aspect of this film is the idea to adapt the Christmas song. The film’s written by Emma Thompson (who shares a ‘story by’ credit with husband Greg Wise) and Byrony Kimmings. Apparently, Emma Thompson has worked on this script since 2010 but it doesn’t feel like that, and that’s disappointing.
It’s disappointing because as a writer, if I were adapting this song, the film’s “surprise twist” would have been the first thing I thought of when adapting the lyrics, and that’s the direction the film goes in. It truly feels like the first idea Thompson and Wise had and they just never made it better, which is a shame since Thompson is a good writer.
I want to keep the twist vague as possible and not spoil it, but the trailer spoils it in itself; so please, if you want to enjoy this and haven’t watched the trailer, avoid it like the plague. Regardless, the film’s writing feels annoyingly obvious and I would have been able to sleuth it out by the 30-minute mark and that never lets me become truly invested in this.
That’s not to say the film is all terrible, because it has good ideas and good moments, like Tom singing Kate a little George Michael lullaby. Emilia Clarke is also charming here and so is Golding. They work well together but I never felt the romantic chemistry I wanted to.
I am a big fan of Kate’s character arc and how she’s just totally selfish because she lost a part of herself. That’s relatable. Her starting to find herself again and love herself—and wanting to sing again—is truly lovely. I also would like to think of this as more of a story about self-love and acceptance than the love story of Kate and Tom.
The characters around Kate don’t work that well. Michelle Yeoh’s Santa is nice, but she’s boring, as is her romantic subplot. Kate’s family drama with her mom Petra (played by Emma Thompson) and sister Marta (Lydia Leonard) is also dull.
The aspect of her family immigrating from Yugoslavia and her wanting her family to call her “Kate” and not “Katya” feels relevant to finding her own identity. A scene where she defends a pair of Yugoslavians on a bus who are scolded for speaking another language is strong because it’s a good character beat. It’s also unfortunately reflective of the intolerance in society right now.
I swear that’s as serious as I’ll get here. The film just feels so forced to be an adaptation of the song that it gets held back from being the sappy, silly romance it should be, and spends too much time with obvious foreshadowing.
I know sappy romance is predictable but I was frustrated with its mediocrity. The good scenes come at the wrong time, as Clarke’s rendition of “Last Christmas” should be a highlight, but I just wanted the film to end by that point. I also cry at every film, and this one never hooked me on an emotional level, which really tells that this doesn’t work for me.
There’s one scene that should make me cry, but it fails because the writing shoehorns a nearly direct quote to the song (“they took it and threw it away”)—and I laughed so hard I had to pause the film for 10 minutes and play the line over and over again.
Full credit to Clarke for saying the line with a straight face, because her character knows the song in this world and unironically quotes the song. That’s a problem I have with the film, too, is I can’t tell if it’s making fun of itself in this moment or if Thompson and Kimmings thought, “Yeah, that’s good, really-on-the-nose, leave it in.”
Maybe next Christmas I’ll assume it is making fun of itself throughout and watch it as the silly, sappy romance that it is because there’s so much Christmas cheer and sappiness that it should work so much better than it does. But right now, “Last Christmas” is too mediocre to give another 103 minutes of my life, and the filmmakers will be hearing from my lawyers for making me whistle its titular tune in early February.
